What is Immersive Content?

VR, MR, XR, AR. It's all a bit confusing. Combined with many headset and mobile distribution options, it is enough to make your head spin. Let us help break it down for you.

VR

VirtualReality

Virtual Reality creates a digital environment that replaces the user’s real-world environment. We consider anything meant to be viewed in a headset as Virtual Reality.

AR

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality overlays digitally-created content into the user’s real-world environment. Pokemon Go is a famous example of AR.

MR

Mixed Reality

An experience that seamlessly blends the user’s real-world environment and digitally-created content, where both environments can coexist and interact with each other. The Void is a popular MR experience.

XR

X Reality

An umbrella term to cover the multiple types of experiences and technologies across VR, AR, MR and any similar areas. X serves as a placeholder for augmented (A), mixed (M) and/or virtual (V).

360/180

VR Video

Video that allows the user to look in every direction around him/her. This is often viewed outside of a headset. Examples include YouTube, Facebook 360, and Vimeo 360. 180VR is the front half of the sphere.

Watch our 180VR showreel

Today, many VR experiences can be divided into two categories

01

Live Action

Shot with arrays of cameras and featuring real places. Live action offers a more realistic immersion experience. Content destined for Youtube or Facebook is often Live Action.

02

Game Engine

The world is created in a 3D game engine, looking more like a video game. This is best if you wish to offer audiences a lot of interactivity.

TYPES OF VR HEADSETS

Cardboard

The entry to VR, you put your mobile phone into a cardboard viewer that you hold up to your face. Cardboard viewers are great for giveaways and to introduce a lot of people to the idea of VR.

Mobile

Daydream and Samsung GearVR are the two Mobile platforms. You still put your phone into a headset, but the headset is equipped with a controller and has a much higher quality feel.

Standalone

These headsets don't need a phone or PC to offer a VR experience. Options include Oculus GO and Oculus Quest.

PC

The highest quality VR experience. You are mostly tethered to a high power gaming computer, but this offers the best graphics, a full 6DoF immersive experience.

Afraid to ask what language we're speaking?

Don't be. Let us break down some common terms you should know when working in the immersive space.

3DoF - Three Degrees of Freedom

3DoF content refers to the fact that you can move your head up, down, left, right, and side to side, but not forward, backwards, etc. It's like your view pivoting around a central point. All 360/180VR video content is 3DoF

6DoF - Six Degrees of Freedom

6DoF content allows you to also move forward, backward, side to side, etc. It's also referred to as "World Space" or "Room Scale" because it offers a fully tracked immersive experience. This is the most immersive VR and requires a game engine or programming in order to work.

Spatial Audio

A technique where sounds are tracked to your head position. For example, if you hear a bird chirping in your left ear and turn your head left in VR to look at the bird, when looking directly at the bird, it sounds like it is in front of you, just like real life. Spatial audio is very important to add to every immersive project.

Monoscopic

A lot of 360 video is monoscopic, or 2D. The video looks like it's projected onto a flat sphere. Still very immersive and often sharper resolution as resources don't have to push different pixels to each eye separately.

Stereoscopic

Also known as 3D. The image has depth because each eye is comprised of a slightly different image mimicking the way that our eyes see the world. More immersive, but also much harder to do and with less resolution since it requries twice as many pixels to acheive the same level of clarity as monoscopic.

Magic Window

When viewing immersive content on a mobile phone, we call that a magic window since as you move the phone around, the image moves like you are looking through a window into another world. Not as immersive as headset, but much more accessible since nearly everybody has a smartphone capable of Magic Window.

Have a project for us?

LIGHT SAIL VR

We are a production company that specializes in cinematic virtual reality storytelling. We bring compelling narratives, dynamic characters and entrancing visuals to every kind of immersive project.